Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

Advanced Micro Devices will announce Wednesday that its first six-core processor in on track to launch later this year.

AMD's "Istanbul" processor will be targeted at server computers. With the release, AMD will be playing catch up to Intel, which began offering its six-core "Dunnington" processor for servers last fall. Intel's first Nehalem-architecture server processor is also due soon, which, on a per-core basis, is expected to offer better performance than Dunnington.

"The silicon is healthy and we're targeting a launch in 2H09," AMD spokesperson Jake Whitman said Tuesday.

"The new 6-core version of the AMD Opteron processor is...everything we had hoped for--and more," John Fruehe, director of business development for server/workstation products at AMD, wrote in a blog.

The "socket 1207" platform and six-core Direct Connect architecture will allow servers with 12, 24 or 48 cores per server in the future, Fruehe said.

"Despite putting more cores in the processor, we managed to keep it in the same power and thermal ranges as our existing 'Shanghai' processors," he writes.

Recent AMD demonstrations of the technology featured "a live, seamless upgrade" of a system based on 45-nanometer quad-core Opteron processors to Istanbul processors. Istanbul is socket- and thermal-compatible with currently shipping AMD Opteron processor-based systems.

Intel and DreamWorks plan to show off the fruits of their 3D collaboration in a Super Bowl 3D extravaganza this Sunday as DreamWorks prepares to tap into future Intel Larrabee graphics silicon.

The Super Bowl ad sponsored by DreamWorks Animation, Intel, and NBC will feature a 3D trailer of the animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens, coming out in March. A second spot will be a 3D commercial for PepsiCo's SoBe LifeWater energy drinks. Viewers--as they will in the movie theater--will need special 3D glasses to see the effects. (Intel has made 125 million of the InTru3D glasses, which are available for free at stores such as Target and Best Buy.)

Stereoscopy--which in a primitive form has been around since the 1840s--creates the illusion of depth by presenting a slightly different image to each eye. Starting this year, DreamWorks will produce all of its feature films in stereoscopic 3D for use with the special glasses.

DreamWorks CEO Jeffry Katzenberg dons Intru 3D glasses that are used for viewing the Super Bowl 3D trailer of Monsters vs. Aliens

(Credit: Intel)

The InTru3D technology will provide more vibrant colors than traditional technologies that use 3D glasses, according to Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive officer of DreamWorks, in an interview posted on an Intel Web page.

"Instead of (traditional) red and blue lensing, there's a different set of filters that are used" that are better at reproducing color, said Katzenberg. "The second thing is a greater level of precision in terms of the broadcast signal--right eye, left eye. The blurry kind of stuff is cleaned up a lot," he said.

But there's a lot more going on with Intel and DreamWorks than meets the eye. Think Intel's future Larrabee graphics chip is just a smoke screen or paper tiger? Listening to Katzenberg, it sounds very real. "We are well on our way to upgrading our software to really take advantage of Larrabee," said Katzenberg, in the Intel video interview. "Larrabee raises the bar of what we can do not just by 2X or 3X but by 20X," he said.

DreamWorks is also using Intel software tools. "This is allowing us to create a completely new paradigm in movies," Katzenberg said, referring to Intel's InTru3D technology, which Intel describes as "uniting the best in computer-generated moviemaking with the latest high-performance processing technologies."

Last year, DreamWorks said it was dropping technology from Advanced Micro Devices in favor of Intel--and at that time the two companies announced a strategic partnership aimed at redefining 3D filmmaking technology. DreamWorks had been in a three-year partnership with AMD.

DreamWorks uses rendering farms with thousands of Intel processing cores to create animation.

Before it adopts Larrabee (later this year), DreamWorks will move part of its rendering farm to Intel's Nehalem processor for servers, due later this quarter.

• Click here for more Super Bowl stories.

Updated on January 26 at 9:50 a.m. PST with additional information about ACP and TDP thermal-envelope ratings.

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday released low-power and high-performance processors that will find their way into servers from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, and Rackable Systems.

The new server processors are updated versions of AMD's 45-nanometer Shanghai processor.

"When we first came to market, we brought out the standard-power (Shanghai processors) because that's where the bulk of our market is," John Fruehe, the director of business development for server and workstation products at AMD, said in an interview. "As always, we follow(ed) up fairly quickly with the HE, which are the energy-efficient models, and the SE, which are the high-performance models."

Pricing for AMD "Shanghai" HE and SE quad-core processors

(Credit: AMD)

The five new low-power 45-nanometer quad-core AMD Opteron HE processors operate at 55-watt ACP, or Average CPU Power (PDF). This standard differs from Intel's Thermal Design Power, or TDP, rating.

"TDP is much more conservative," Fruehe said. "The TDP on those (HE) processors is 79 watts," he said. But the "average customer is going to see them running in the mid-40s (ACP) range," Fruehe added.

AMD's HE processor 55-watt ACP is very close to Intel's Xeon quad-core E5430 processor, for example, which has a TDP of 80 watts.

Low-power HE processors, with speeds ranging from 2.1GHz to 2.3GHz, are designed to address a segment of the server market--such as massive data centers--"that must maximize performance during peak hours while managing the energy costs during idle and low-utilization hours," AMD said.

High-performance SE processors, which run at 2.8GHz, are targeted at customers with "the most performance-intensive data center workloads," AMD said.

At the 105-watt ACP thermal envelope, these new processors are immediately available in three new systems from HP, as well as from other technology partners, AMD said.

Intel is planning price cuts to its lower-end mainstream quad-core processors on January 18.

Barron's Tech Trader Daily first reported the news, citing Pacific Crest analyst Michael McConnell.

These cuts are happening because of the recent introduction of Advanced Micro Devices' 45-nanometer Phenom II and "Shanghai" Opteron processors.

AMD's quad-core Phenom II "Dragon" processor platform has been garnering solid reviews and its Shanghai server chip has been adopted by top-tier server suppliers including Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Dell, IBM, and Fujitsu.

Cuts are expected mainly on quad-core processors, though other processors may also receive cuts.

Let bygones be bygones. That's what Advanced Micro Devices is hoping for with the roll-out of its first 45-nanometer processor Thursday.

(AMD also announced its upcoming 45-nanometer "Phenom II X4" desktop technology. See below.)

The No. 2 PC processor supplier will make the case that Shanghai is not Barcelona. The latter chip--AMD's first quad-core processor--was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare but then faced prolonged delays. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market. (AMD lost more than five percentage points to Intel in the server market during the third quarter of this year, according to various reports.)

AMD Shanghai die

"Barcelona was obviously a pretty rough start for them. And that does not appear to be the case for Shanghai," said Dean McCarron, the principal and founder of Mercury Research, a company that tracks chip market movements. "One of the big distinctions was they wanted to be absolutely sure that Shanghai was ready to go."

Shanghai is not a new architecture but essentially a refresh of AMD's Barcelona Opteron chip. AMD claims Shanghai is 35 percent faster than Barcelona without using more energy. The chip is being built on 45-nanometer process technology, while Barcelona was a 65-nanometer part. Typically, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power efficient the processor.

Major customers are brimming with accolades for Shanghai. "We've been very pleased. Thrilled with their execution," said with Paul Gottsegen, vice president of Industry Standard Servers, HP, in an interview.

"We'll have products that will be shipping just after launch. We had high performance expectations for the product and it exceeded our expectations," he said. "We're going to put Shanghai across the meat of our product line. You'll see six different rack servers, three different blades, all up and down parts of our product line."

And HP likes the fact that Shanghai is more power efficient, a critical metric for many server applications. "We're seeing a significantly higher performance-per-watt over previous-generation AMD," Gottsegen said.

HP would not comment on AMD's checkered quad-core past. In response to a question about drawing a comparison with AMD's Barcelona launch last September and Shanghai, Gottsegen would not comment. "This is their Shanghai launch. I want to focus on Shanghai," he said.

Cray is also expected to use Shanghai in its supercomputers, according to AMD.

Both HP and Dell are targeting Shanghai processors specifically for virtualization, which allows a data center to reduce the number of physical servers. Shanghai has a silicon "assist" that facilitates virtualization.

Praise from vendors doesn't necessarily translate into market success, however. Especially when the market is going south in a hurry. "We have a demand-falling-off-the-cliff scenario," said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Collins Stewart.

"Shanghai, which in a normal environment may have had a window of opportunity, it's not likely to do so today," Kumar said. "By the time demand recovers in the second half of next year, Intel will be fielding their (next-generation) Nehalem product," Kumar added, referring to Intel's server version of the Nehalem processor.

Shanghai Opteron processors are available immediately, the company said. The 75-watt versions of the processor range from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz in clock speed. Enhanced Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE (55-watt) and SE (105-watt) processors are planned for the first quarter of 2009, AMD said.

Shanghai technology ahead of Intel

Much of Shanghai's raw technology is a generation ahead of Intel. In a posting at EE Times, Don Scansen, a semiconductor technology analyst at Semiconductor Insights, said that many of the features that Intel is touting as new are not new to AMD and were initially introduced in AMD's Barcelona processor.

"Intel's Nehalem is due out soon, but many of the features of what has widely been touted as a 'new' architecture are only new to Intel," he writes.

"There is no question that Intel is at the cutting edge of process (manufacturing) technology, but that's not true for architecture. Intel probably decided it made more sense to introduce a highly integrated, quad-core design on 45nm rather than 65nm just to keep the chip size down. Whatever the reasons, the introduction of Intel's Nehalem architecture will come more than a year later than AMD's Barcelona."

Scansen says that, among other things, AMD has reduced the "die footprint" (chip size) by more than 10 percent, despite doubling the total cache memory from 4MB to 8MB.

Upcoming 45nm desktop processors

AMD plans to bring Shanghai 45nm processor technology to the desktop PC market in Q1 2009 with a platform codenamed "Dragon."

"This platform will be the second-generation AMD performance desktop platform, featuring all next-generation components in comparison to the first-generation AMD 'Spider' platform released in 2008," AMD said in a statement.

The Dragon platform will combine 45nm AMD Phenom II X4 quad-core processors with AMD 700 Series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics.

Advanced Micro Devices' first 45-nanometer chip, the Shanghai quad-core Opteron, has made its debut at resellers.

The officially unannounced Opteron 837X and 838X series processors are not cheap. Online reseller PC Connection lists the Opteron QC (quad-core) 8384 at $2,509. Another reseller, Buy.com lists the same processor at $2,240.

The 8384 is expected to run at 2.7GHz and draw 75 watts, relatively low power consumption for a quad-core server processor.

The 8385--same clock speed with a faster system bus--is offered for $2,509 at PC Connection.

Other processors listed include the 8382 (2.6GHz), 8380 (2.5GHz), and 8378 (2.4GHz), priced at $2,177, $1,768, and $1,360 respectively at PC Connection. Note that these prices will differ from official pricing from AMD.

The Shanghai Opteron 230X series includes the 2382 (2.6GHz) and 2380 (2.5GHz). These are priced at $1,019 and $814 respectively at PC Connnection.

Rollout of the chip is expected officially on November 13, according to industry sources.

AMD is hoping to make a much better impression with Shanghai. Its first quad-core chip, Barcelona, was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare only to be delayed a whopping eight months (or more, depending how the delay is calculated) due to production glitches and bugs. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market.

Shanghai is in full production right now, Pat Patla, general manager of AMD's server and workstation chip business said last month. The was confirmed during AMD's earnings conference call earlier this month.

Server vendors are expected to be shipping systems as early as this quarter. A Sun Microsystems spokesperson said Tuesday that it plans to offer Shanghai processors on its current x64 platforms running Barcelona. Systems using the new processors are targeted for the first quarter of 2009, the spokesperson said.

At the same clock frequency (speed), Shanghai will outperform Barcelona by about 20 percent, Patla said last month.

AMD is also boosting the size of the cache memory, which typically speeds performance, from 2 megabytes to 6 megabytes. Another speed improvement will come from increasing "instructions per clock."

Patla also said last month that AMD is "turning on HT3 (HyperTransport 3)"--a communication path between chips--and that partners will start to validate systems in the first quarter of next year with this technology.

Intel has upstaged Advanced Micro Devices at DreamWorks Animation. The movie studio has decided to drop AMD and go with processors from Intel, citing better performance and a more promising roadmap.

DreamWorks specifically mentioned Intel's upcoming Nehalem processor and Larrabee graphics chip as reasons for the switch.

Intel and DreamWorks announced Tuesday that they had formed a strategic alliance for 3D filmmaking technology. DreamWorks plans to produce all its feature films in stereoscopic 3D--which requires the viewer to wear special glasses for enhanced 3D--beginning next year. Intel will provide DreamWorks with "the latest high-performance processing technologies, including future chips with multiple processing cores," the companies said.

This is a setback for AMD. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker rolled out its quad-core Barcelona last year at George Lucas' Lucasfilm campus in San Francisco to make a point: Barcelona would be big player in the movie industry. But a series of delays related to a processor bug put a damper on the high expectations for Barcelona.

"AMD maintained a long and fruitful relationship with DreamWorks Animation, beginning in early 2005. Earlier this year, AMD and DreamWorks decided not to extend our marketing and technology relationship. However, DreamWorks Animation is still an important and respected AMD customer and we look forward to having the opportunity to work with them again in the future," AMD said in a statement.

Essentially, DreamWorks looked down the road and liked what it saw coming from Intel better. "When we look at the Intel roadmap, it is more closely aligned with our needs," John Batter, president of production at DreamWorks Animations, said during a conversation with Nanotech: The Circuits blog. "The rendering times have been going up because of the complexity and richness of the images. Then you layer on top of that 3D. Something that's already growing--and doubling it."

Intel had the best technology, Batter said. "You need a lot more horsepower. On Intel's upcoming generation, the number of cores is going to help us satiate the big spike in our needs."

DreamWorks had been in a three-year partnership with AMD, Batter said.

He explained that Intel is also helping DreamWorks to redesign its animation tools. "Our animation tools are all proprietary here. Intel is rearchitecting our software tools...to take advantage of multicore and make our renderer highly scalable as well as making our character animation tools highly scalable."

DreamWorks uses rendering farms with as many as 5,000 cores to create animation and its tools need to be adapted to the increasing number of processor cores, Batter said. The Nehalem chip, for example, is expected to integrate as many as eight cores. Currently, Intel offers no more than four cores per chip. Larrabee is expected by many to offer as many as 32 cores.

Intel Nehalem architecture

(Credit: Intel)

Batter specifically mentioned both Nehalem and Larrabee as a reason for the switch to Intel. He said that Larrabee would be "complementary" to Intel's general-purpose CPUs.

Nehalem is due in the fourth quarter of this year and Larrabee is expected in the 2009-2010 time frame.

The first Intel-Dreamworks release will be Monsters vs. Aliens, which is slated to hit movie theaters in March 2009.

Intel Xeon processors--particularly the "Harpertown" variety--dominated the top 500 supercomputer list. But IBM's Power chips made a strong showing as usual at the very top of the list. AMD's Opteron processor landed in the No. 1 and No. 4 ranked systems.

Top 10 processors in Top500 supercomputer list

(Credit: Top500.org)

The Top500 List--updated twice a year--of supercomputers was released Wednesday. Intel's Xeon, AMD's Opteron, and IBM's Power chips vied for most of the spots in the list.

The most dominant chip was the Intel Xeon E54xx series "Harpertown" processor. Appearing in 116 systems for 23.2 percent of the total. The largest for any single processor model.

The Xeon 53xx series "Clovertown" processor was next, appearing in 92 systems for 18.4 percent of the total. Following Clovertown was the Xeon 51xx series "Woodcrest" processor with 18.2 percent of the total.

Harpertown and Clovertown are quad-core processors, Woodcrest is dual-core.

In the No. 4 slot was the AMD Opteron dual-core chip (8.4 percent), followed by the X54xx series of Intel Harpertown processors (7.8 percent), then by the PowerPC 440 (4.22 percent).

(Note: Combining the Intel Harpertown E54xx series and X54xx series boosts the total for this chip model to 31 percent.)

The IBM Power processors passed the AMD Opteron family and "are now (again) the second most common processor family with 68 systems (13.6 percent), up from 61 systems (12.2 percent) six months ago," Top500.org said.

AMD's strongest showing was in the top five supercomputers. Opteron processors played a major role in the No. 1 IBM Roadrunner system, which connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron chips as well as 12,240 IBM Cell chips (on IBM Model QS22 blade servers).

See: IBM's Roadrunner breaks petaflop barrier, tops supercomputer list.

The No. 4 Sun Microsystems' SunBlade system uses over 62,000 cores running inside AMD Opteron quad-core processors running at 2.0GHz.

The No. 2 and No. 3 systems were based on IBM PowerPC 450 chips.

Other Top500 processor highlights:

• A total of 375 systems (75 percent) are now using Intel processors. This is up from six months ago (354 systems, 70.8 percent) and represents the largest share for Intel chips in the Top500 ever.

• 56 systems (11 percent) are using AMD Opteron processors, down from 78 systems (15.6 percent) six months ago.

• 283 systems are using quad-core processor based systems.

On Monday, Advanced Micro Devices announced availability of low-power quad-core Opteron processors targeted at servers.

AMD quad-core Opteron

(Credit: AMD)

The HE (high-efficiency) processors have a thermal envelope of 55 watts. Other AMD quad-core server processors have higher thermal envelopes of 105 watts or 75 watts.

The low-power Opterons are available in both the 2300 and 8300 series. The 2300 series processors are designed for servers that use two processors, while the 8300 series processors are for systems that use four or eight processors.

The new parts include the 8347 HE (1.9GHz, $873) and the 2347 HE (1.9GHz, $377).

"Our new Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processors were designed to help data center managers who see power consumption and virtualization as the keys to solving their overall performance equation," Randy Allen, general manager at AMD's Server and Workstation Division, said in a statement.

Intel announced in March energy-efficient quad-core Xeon processors with a thermal envelope of 50 watts at core frequencies as high as 2.50GHz.